Bitcoin Miners Help Texas Grid Handle Record 91,308 MW Demand

ERCOT served a preliminary 91,308 megawatts around 5 p.m. on July 22, the day after demand had hit 87,403 MW, erasing the 85,508 MW record that had stood since August 2023. Neither afternoon triggered a conservation appeal, and the system carried more than 20 gigawatts of headroom at the peak. Days later, the grid operator told regulators demand could roughly double within six years, to 175,000 MW.

The cushion came in part from large flexible loads, primarily Bitcoin mining facilities, signed into voluntary curtailment agreements with ERCOT. Riot Platforms reported more than 95% curtailment during peak hours in August 2023, collecting $31.7 million that month, $24.2 million in curtailment credits and $7.4 million in demand-response revenue, against 333 Bitcoin worth roughly $8.9 million. Hashprice has since recovered to about $32 from a $27.20 low in June, still around 35% below last October's $49.40, which is why those shutdowns remain cheap today.

Why it matters

The ERCOT model was built around an unusual structural fact: Texas deliberately kept its grid electrically isolated from neighbours to avoid federal oversight, which left it unable to import its way out of Winter Storm Uri in February 2021. What it gained instead was the ability to pay large computing facilities to power down during scarcity. Senate Bill 6, signed in June 2025, codifies that idea, requiring curtailment protocols on new large loads and pushing ERCOT to procure demand reductions from customers drawing 75 MW or more. Roughly 90% of the 438,000 MW connection queue is now data centres, which has reshaped the political position miners occupy: they no longer compete just with each other for cheap power, they compete with AI operators for the same interconnection slots.

Market impact

The flexibility Texas is leaning on this summer is partly a product of a bad year for mining. Network difficulty has fallen about 14% since January, putting 2026 on track for the first annual decline in Bitcoin's history, because so many machines have already gone offline. A Bitcoin recovery flips the math: higher hashprice raises the wholesale price a miner needs to see before switching off becomes worthwhile. Meanwhile, the curtailable share is shrinking from the inside. Riot's Rockdale campus, the site behind those 2023 credits, now hosts a leased AMD data centre. Batteries discharged a record 11,980 MW on July 22, and solar set a record near 34,700 MW, covering the evening ramp with capacity a mine cannot match.